Dance can be described as a conversation between bodies but in Lucy Guerin's latest work, Conversation Piece, the conversation is an actual one, between three performers at the beginning of the show. A casually improvised eight-minute long chat becomes the script for the rest of the show where three dancers and three actors use iPhones to enlarge and expand on the utterances and what may lie underneath them. Moments of ridiculousness and comedy ensue as a result of their antics; at one point a performer presents the conversation as a monologue with its own laugh track, at another the conversation becomes one-sided, something imposed on us while catching public transport; further on language becomes a weapon of humiliation. The dancers respond to rhythms of language with movements of staccato eloquence, bringing literalism to the idea of 'dance vocabulary'. At one point the utterances aren't even in English so you see how the stuff of real communication is in subtext. A duet has a dancer mirroring the words with movement, in relationship with language as music. The myriad ways we use conversation: to connect, to play one-upmanship, to hide our vulnerability, to bore, dominate, grasp, attack or evade, are here danced out in a performance of genuine originality. Well developed and confidently presented, Lucy Guerin's Conversation Piece is a delight, engaging audiences with depth, whimsy, revelation and humour. Top stuff.
Arts House: Meat Market (finished)
